Twilight, the movie and the book

When I taught at CTY last summer, all of the girls were reading Twilight. They would read it under their desks during class and stay up all night reading it in the dorms. They passed it around and all their copies were worn with reading and rereading. I'd seen the same thing with the younger kids and Harry Potter the year before. I was curious enough to want to read the book myself, but resisted, until the movie came out. I wanted to see the movie. I've always like movie and literature about vampires. I was still a bit embarrassed to read it in public, but in the safety of my own home I finished the book in three days. It amazes me how much people like this book. Friends of mine, adult women, who almost never read, are reading it.

I don't think it is a great book, but what Stephanie Meyer is great at, is making it difficult to put the book down. The big revelation after the first three hundred pages is something that the reader already knows if s/he has looked at the back cover, seen the trailer for the movie or knows at all what the book is about. Edward is a vampire. Bella is in love with a vampire. When I would ask the girls in my class last summer what the book was about, they would think about it for a minute and then say, "It's about a girl who is in love with a vampire." The thing is, that is what it is about, not much more. If you hang on until the last hundred pages (which Meyer makes it relatively easy to do), there is some action, but only for a small portion of the book. The majority of the novel's 500 or so pages, is an exploration of how essentially vampiric teenage love is. I was reading my own journal from high school last night, and it shocks me how much love and obsession were linked in my adolescent mind. I want to say something interesting about this book and about teenage sex and vampirism, but I'm out of practice. The New York Times review does a better job than I would, I think. It made me want to see it.

Overall I think that the book is a fun read, and reminds me of how excessively I felt at one point in my own life. The movie is also entertaining. I think that it is true to the book for the most part and I enjoyed it, although I don't think there is much more to say than that.

Nonfiction Roundup

Ok, so I remembered some of the other things that I read over my hiatus. Here they are in the nonfiction roundup:

Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild: I'd read Krakauer before. Under the Banner of Heaven sparked my interest because of it's subject matter and I read it years ago. I was not aware at the time that Krakauer was primarily a nature writer. On a car trip a couple of years ago, I listened to a copy of Into Thin Air that I picked up at a thrift store and found it much more engaging that Banner, even though I wasn't terribly drawn to the subject matter. I had heard a lot about Into the Wild and the story of Chris McCandless before I read it. I heard about it from a friend who was working academically on ideas about American masculinity. I had a preformed idea that McCandless was basically a romantic, who made the mistake of confusing fiction and reality. I saw Sean Penn's beautiful film version, which I really believe buys into the myth of McCandless, before I read the book. I think that Krakauer's book is more balanced. I think that Krakauer envies and idolizes (and romanticizes) McCandless, but also struggles in that he recognizes the error of his ways. I also thought that the book was very readable, and interesting from a literary perspective as well.

Grogan, John, Marley and Me: I listened to this on the car ride on the way to Santa Cruz. It was a guilty pleasure. I really enjoyed it. The story is touching and human and I am certainly an animal lover myself. I cried.

Wallace, David Foster, McCain's Promise: First of all, David Foster Wallace will be missed. When I saw this sitting on the shelf with the other "election books" at my local B&N, I was curious. It turns out that this article, which originally appeared in Rolling Stone, is also reprinted in Consider the Lobster (a book already on my shelf that I have not read). This re-release came out for the election season with a forward by Slate writer Jacob Weisberg, which was one of the highlights of the book, so I wasn't sad that I bought a full price copy of something I already owned. As someone who considers herself on the far side of the left, but nonetheless might have voted for McCain if he had won the 2000 nomination, and is a (basically) native Arizonan, I have always been fascinated by McCain as a politician. Although I was a firm Obama supporter (yes, we can) in the 2008 election, I am still interested in McCain. I was also interested to see what Foster Wallace - not much of a conservative- saw that fascinated him about this candidate. It turns out that in 2000, McCain was as confusing as he is now. Wallace points out the paradox of McCain as a politician: he seems unable to reconcile truthfulness and politics, but really wants to. I found this a really engaging examination of the candidate and also really innovative in terms of political writing. Wallace is not a political writer and shows his audience what it means to campaign from a very different perspective.

Oh sad, neglected blog...

I mean to write to you, I really do. I just always get so wrapped up in my teaching as soon as the semester starts, all my other projects disappear from my radar.

So, here we are at the end of the semester and I'm returning to my still-new-to-me, but actually months old and neglected blog.

I've read a few things this semester, even with all the FYC grading:

I read Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited in preparation to see the movie version that I didn't actually go to see. I expected to like this book more than I did, however, for the first half at least, I liked it a lot. It was certainly funny, and Sebastian reminded me of those friends from your (yours, not mine;)) sordid past that you are glad you are rid of, but still miss all the time.

I read Dorothy Allison's, Bastard out of Carolina in an attempt to return to my alphabetical reading. This book was wonderful, and painful, and critically fecund, and I should (and might) devote a post to it. This book was disturbing, but also deeply beautiful and sad (I would ream my students for using so many easy outs in one sentence). It should be read.

I read Simon Armitage's translation into a dramatic version of the Odyssey. I really enjoyed Armitage's translation that came out last year of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so I looked forward to this and it didn't disappoint. I doubt (although I wouldn't know personally) that it is any substitute for reading Homer, but it is really accessible and readable.

I read the Philip K. Dick short story, "Minority Report" and was suprised by its brevity.

I know I read some other things that I can't think of.

I'm currently reading:
Francine Prose, How to Read like a Writer
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Stephanie Meyer, Twilight (currently the priority to be finished by Friday)

Hopefully, I'll post soon. I'll keep my own fingers crossed.

Taylor Antrim, The Headmaster Ritual and some movies I've seen recently

I'll start with the movies...

Pineapple Express: Despite some objections I have to the way that Judd Apatow portrays women in relationships, I usually enjoy his movies. I think Superbad is the best comedy of 2007 hands down. Pineapple Express starts out alright with a few good laughs, mostly provided by Seth Rogan. It is the story of a stoner who witnesses a murder and gets caught up in a wild goose chase with his dealer. About halfway through the film transforms into an action film that is not terribly engaging and seems to be at odds with the comedy in the first half. I was freezing in the theater and we caught the late show - which is never a good idea for me - so my enjoyment was affected by the environment as well.
Bottom Line: I would say that this is a renter. It is one of the stoniest movies I've seen since Half Baked, so I think it will garner a following of a certain kind.

Tropic Thunder: This is a movie that I thought would offend me, but I was pleasantly surprised. It is about a group of actors, making a Vietnam movie, who end up lost in the jungle, but still thinking they are merely making a movie. It is really funny. I like Ben Stiller about half the time and when I like him I really like in (in Zoolander, for example). This is a good Ben Stiller movie. I always say that Robert Downey Jr. rarely chooses to be in a bad movie, and this is no exception. In a role that could potentially be completely over the top, he plays it just right.
Bottom Line: This movie is worth seeing for the ridiculous Tom Cruise character alone.

Mongol: This is the story of Ghengis Khan before he became Ghengis Khan. It is a truly epic movie. The scenery is beautiful, and the story is an effective combination of emotional family drama and well-choreographed battle scenes. The movie is long - I thought it was over a few times before it actually ended - and it only captures a relatively small portion of the khan's life.
Bottom Line: Definitely worth seeing on the big screen. It wouldn't have the same effect on DVD.

Okay, so Antrim. I was excited to read the Headmaster Ritual. I read a decent review of it in The New York Times and the blurbs on the cover praising the novel came from writers I respect like Christopher Buckley. I also really enjoy the campus novel or boarding school novel in this case. Buckley claims that this is "the best novel set at a boarding school since A Separate Peace." I actually enjoyed Curtis Sittenfield's Prep substantially more than Antrim's first novel.
I started out enjoying this novel, which is a two part story about a newly hired teacher at an exclusive East Coast boarding school, and the son of the quasi-terrorist headmaster, who is a former left-wing radical, and current North Korean enthusiast. I enjoyed the addition of the teachers into the traditional student-centered picture in the academic novel, and Antrim's language and description are often surprising and effective. However, by the second half of the novel I was lost due to the implausibility of the plot. I also, just didn't really care what happened to the characters. I think that, perhaps, the switching back and forth between the two plots was a distraction. I failed to connect to the characters as a reader, and none of the numerous (sometimes seemingly extraneous) plotlines kept my attention either.
Bottom Line: Unless you are an enthusiast of the genre, this book was kind of a drag for me to read (at least for the last 100 pages), so I would skip it.

Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

So, I've been absent from this brand new blog for a while. I've been on a lovely vacation down the California coast and since I've been back, I've been scrambling to put together two new syllabi for freshman composition. Ugh.

Well, Kobo Abe was the first in my TBR A to Z self challenge. I actually finished the book about two months ago, so bear with my scanty review. Abe's book is beautiful and it gives an interesting retelling of the traditional tale of the existential novel: man is stuck in horrifying circumstances that appear totally random but eventually realizes along with the reader that those very circumstances are the condition of all humanity.

I found this book really trying because the situation of this particular character seems so awful, yet so escapable. The Kafkaesque village in the dunes that the man stumbles upon while on a day excursion, bug hunting, ends up taking him prisoner. He is forced day after day to shovel away the ceaseless ocean of sand that threatens to envelop the village.

I found it interesting that the story is framed as a murder mystery, beginning: "One day in August a man disappeared." The contrast between the world he disappears from and the world he becomes a part of, is a stark one. There are also some kind of fabulous illustrations throughout the text.

Bottom Line: If you are a big fan of existential literature, or of the stark minimalism and beauty of Japanese writers, check out Abe. At times, the book can be tedious and dry (no pun intended), but the strange beauty of the prose and the horrifying nature of the character's situation are the novel's redemption.

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

I picked up Oliver Sacks most famous book on neurological disorder after I saw someone assign it to their class at work last summer. Like all my books, it sat for quite some time on my shelf.

I'm glad that I picked it up. Sacks discusses some of his most interesting patients with right brain disorders. In the Introduction to the book, he discusses the differences between right and left brain disorders. He also discusses the process of creating a "case study" and claims that people with right brain disorders are better material for case studies that take a more humanistic approach. I am sort of enamored of this idea of medicine as storytelling.

The cases are fascinating, although sometimes in a morbid way. I have heard criticisms of Sacks claiming that he romanticizes brain disorders, while the real face of mental illness is a terrifying one. I disagree with this criticism, at least for the most part. Sacks conveys rather well how terrifying a disorder must be that makes you (for instance) unable to recognize any faces, or relive a moment over and over again. The exceptions are perhaps some of the portraits he paints of autism, or the woman with syphilis induced dementia (which was portrayed in an episode on the first season of House). However, I think that he is relatively true to his patient's stories.

Bottom Line: Definitely worth reading. I found the first few case studies engaging, but then began to lose interest. This might be a book that is better read in small segments while reading something else simultaneously.

Jane Green, Bookends

I picked up a lot of books after I finished Robbins and couldn't settle on any of them. I would start something, read a chapter, put it down (I am seriously inflicted with the can't get into the book disease). Finally, I settled on a beach read, Jane Green's Bookends. I've read Jane Green before. I read Jemima J when I was an undergraduate at Pitzer College, and I would still vote that novel as one of the finer examples of the genre known as chick lit (along with Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed).

Bookends doesn't really compare to that earlier novel, although the premise does appeal to me. Both the protagonist Cath and I are socially awkward homebodies who dream of owning a bookshop in London. Cath shares many of the attributes of the title character in Jemima J, but is somehow not as easy to relate to. The story is about four friends: Simon, Cath, Josh and Portia. They are tight in college, but as they enter adulthood they drift apart and Portia splits from the group entirely (only to reenter - dramatically - later in the novel). Like most novels in the genre, soap-opera-like drama ensues.

Unlike many "chick-lit" books, the romantic plot-line takes a back seat to some of the other concerns: Cath's burgeoning business and the web of rumors that circulates through the group of friends. Of course, the romance is there, but the Cinderella plot line is less pronounced than in some other novels of a similar kind. Some of the drama is over the top, especially near the end and there are definitely a few twists and turns that are meant to shock, but that I found predictable.

Bottom Line: I didn't think that this novel added much to the familiar story of the "chick lit" novel. However, it is a book about a girl who loves books, which kept this girl who loves books reading until the end.

Alexandra Robbins, Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities

This book sat on my shelf for quite some time. Three years ago, one of my summer camp colleagues read it, and since I taught at a school where Greek Life dominated the social life of the University, the book intrigued me. I always enjoy reading "pop sociology" books, so when I saw this on the shelf at my local used book store in Tucson, I picked it up, knowing it would likely sit on my shelf for quite some time. I picked it up right after I finished my exam, since after reading the top 100 of English/American/World literature, I was ready for some lighter reading.

I have to say that Pledged did not disappoint. Robbins is an astute observer of the community of sorority girls that she becomes a part of and observes as the material for her book. Robbins has the obvious advantage over most writers wanting to observe college age women (Tom Wolfe's research for I Am Charlotte Simmons comes to mind here), because she looks like one and seems to "pass" fairly successfully in a community that prides itself on exclusivity. The girls seem to really open up to Robbins and reveal some of the less appealing (read: totally scandalous) aspects of sorority life.

I agree with some of the critics of the book that Robbins is generalizing all sorority life into a haze of drunken hookups, bulimia, and cattiness. She does point to the philanthropic goals of Greek organizations, but emphasizes that these goals are lost amongst all of the date dashes and in-fighting that really dominate the lives of the members. I think that this is certainly overdone. Many young women that I know/have known became involved in Greek Life as a way to make a niche for themselves and to participate in a group (part of that being participation in charity organizations and in leadership roles). I also think that there are likely big differences between sororities at large state schools and those at private liberal arts schools that are largely overlooked in the book along with differences between individual sororities (not to mention individual members).

Robbins points out some really interesting aspects of this world in her discussion of the socioeconomic and racial dimensions of Greek Life and really sheds light on some of the more unacceptably outdated aspects of the system. Much criticism of the Greeks focuses on the treatment of women and ignores the larger picture of oppression in determining who becomes and insider in the organization.

Bottom Line: This is a good read, and although some of the examples are sensationalized, it is entertaining and informative. I would recommend the book to anyone who has a (perhaps shameful) fascination with the beautiful people in the world (aka reads "Us" magazine), or anyone who can relate to the lengths that people will go to be a part of a group. I hope to read Robbin's most recent book The Overachievers, which addresses another group of "insiders" and also another group (middle and high school honors students) that I work with.

What is up?

So, this is a blog about the things that I am reading, whether it be for work (teaching freshman English) or for fun. I am a recent graduate of the University of Arizona with my master's in English Literature. My pseudo-specialty is 19th and 20th century American literature and psychoanalytic theory. I LOVE Hawthorne as the title of this blog may indicate. I also really like film, so the blog may be a bit about that as well.

Right now, I am working through my bookshelf of TBR's from A to Z. I hope to read most of the books that I own and have not read before I go back to grad school to get my PhD. However, to do that, I would probably have to stop buying books right now, which is not likely to happen. In fact yesterday, I picked up a copy of Watership Down, Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts, a collection of Jack London's short stories and a Norton Critical Edition of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives and Q.E.D, just on my way home from the coffee shop. I am working for three weeks at a summer camp in Santa Cruz, which has some of the best independent bookshops around. How could I possibly help it?

Besides reading the fiction in alphabetical order, I have been interspersing my reading with nonfiction for variety. I have some catching up to do since I haven't been posting, but have read a number of books since graduation. My goal is to read one book per week on top of what I read for work. We'll see how it goes.

Finally, I'm also working on writing a novel, which may or may not make some appearances on the blog as well. We'll see...